06/07/2026
The real reason we hurt babies, and others, and even ourselves...
THE MIRROR AND THE WINDOW OF THE SELF
The Mirror and the Window
How typical is the general attitude is of the modern, atheistic, self-indulgent and self-serving world we live in!
I refer to the spirit of a world in which we are taught to do only what serves our immediate, self-centered materialistic goals, to shirk any moral responsibility for our actions, to not only ignore, but even to justify the negative effect of our selfish actions on the lives of others, including those closest to us (and no one is closer to us than the child in the womb, waiting to be born).
But this contemporary spirit is not strength of character or self-affirmation or empowerment of any kind;
This is, on the contrary, a cowardly lack of character:
it is self-degradation and debilitation of both the self and the surrounding society in which one lives.
In the long run, even the person who manifests this spirit will become himself or herself the victim of a world that sanctions the use and the abuse of human beings as a means to an end, that discards them once they are no longer useful as such:
In this brutal context, the precious and unique individual who is each of us and who is every conceived human being, now becomes the pawn and the victim of a crazed society that gives those who possess power or authority or financial means the right to control, to even harm the lives of those who are less fortunate, less powerful, more dependent upon others.
Tragically, this perverse and egotistic mentality of "I do what is best for me and only for me, rather than what is best for others", that is to say, this distorted mindset which is falsely propagated as a sign of individual liberty and freedom of choice, is contagious, ruinous and even deadly:
it is the hateful, Evil-inspired antithesis of the very reason we were created in the first place, namely, as an outward manifestation and symbol of unselfish Divine Love, and of the fundamental purpose for which we were created, i.e., to love unselfishly in return our Maker and the rest of His Creation.
Given this epidemic of selfishness, no longer condemned, but justified, rationalized and even openly championed by so many today, is it any wonder why the world suffers?
Is it any wonder why no one seems to care about anything but their own needs and ends?
Is it any wonder why there is so much evil around us, manifest in so many ways, and why human society ironically seems to be devolving into chaos, rather than evolving toward something higher and more noble?
True inner joy, radiant self-fulfillment, the generous love that are the external signs of the Creator and of Paradise itself, are blocked by the mental mirror that is pointed toward the self, and which reflects only our own self-image.
Not until this mirror becomes a window that opens out toward others and bonds the one who gazes through it to everything and everyone he or she observes, will Paradise be found again...
Dr. James Fiatarone, Director,
ALMA / Academy of Language & Music Arts, California;
Director, SAVE-A-BABY Foundation.
